


(In Our Togetherness) Castles Are Built

by fluffernutter8



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Hearts or Butts Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 14:09:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22717279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: Learning to live together takes work.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 14
Kudos: 103





	(In Our Togetherness) Castles Are Built

They are not, it turns out, naturally compatible roommates.

Oh, they’re both courteous enough people. They both pitch in on cleaning up, take out the trash when the bin is full, replace the toilet paper roll or lightbulbs when needed instead of pretending they haven’t seen them - they’re not _monsters_.

But Steve wears his shoes inside the house without even thinking while Peggy takes hers off as she walks in the door, and she ends up irritated by the remaining street grit he unknowingly brings inside which she constantly feels through her nylons. He acquiesces easily when, three days in, she asks him to start removing his shoes when he comes home. He’s solicitous by nature and happy to make her happy. But they have been in such synchronicity since they met, in personality and values and choices, that these times when they stumble into dissonance are made all the more confusing for it.

And they keep stumbling. Peggy has changed from fire red nails to shell pink to deep plum, swiping firmly with polish remover and buffing and adding practiced coats in the evenings, before Steve mentions, carefully controlled, that the acrid smell in the small space is overwhelming to him. Several weeks later, as she asks him to contain his art supplies more carefully when he is in the midst of a project, she does not bring up the scent of paint in the room but the idea of it lingers.

He can’t understand why she insists on washing her breakfast plate and teacup even when she’s rushing out the door, and objects when she sighs and washes his too if he tries to leave them to wash with the supper dishes later. She can’t fathom why he insists on regularly listening to baseball games, and especially does not grasp why he must commentate aloud while he does, his soundtrack of groans and curses and punctuating affirmations making an already disruptive pastime she has no interest in even more so. He likes having the windows open, especially on these summer nights, and she closes them at every opportunity against the bugs and the noise, the city-scented breeze. She buys new paperbacks nearly every week or at least every other, and he stares baffled at the living room bookshelf, quickly filling with books she will likely never read again, and reminds her of their local library.

They are not good at it at first. But they do, it turns out, get better at it.

“It might be sensible to have a box of cold cereal in the house,” Peggy calls from the bedroom one morning. They’ve once again spent a bit too much time in bed, and as she rushes to get ready for the day, he’s gone to prepare toast and an egg for her - soft-boiled because they’re short on time.

“Easier for us on mornings like this,” he calls back, “but easier for the pests too.”

Coming into the room affixing an earring, she asks, “Do we have some sort of infestation?”

“Nothing I’ve seen lately, but you never know with these kinds of things.” He shrugs.

“I suppose not,” she says, reaching down plates for the two of them (no time even for egg cups). “But I don’t usually think of it.”

He laughs, taking out the butter. “Oh, you would if you’d seen the things I have,” he says, and it’s lucky Peggy isn’t squeamish or easily put off her food, because the casual mentions over breakfast of occasional scuttling roaches and his mother’s broom corralling fist-sized rats would turn a weaker stomach.

“I had thought your insistence on canisters for the oats and sugar was simply a homey touch,” she comments as she slips on her pumps and glances around for her portfolio.

“It is,” he says, handing it to her along with her purse. “Just from a different kind of home than you’re used to.”

That evening, when she comes home and sees his shoes leveled neatly beside each other by the front door, she asks him about that too. She hadn’t even thought to before. And he tells her about floors that somehow always seemed grimy no matter how often they cleaned, about times when there wasn’t any heat - not in the dead of winter, not usually, but in the trailing autumn and snappish early spring when the chill was still biting - and Steve and his mother kept their shoes on because taking them off would have meant frigid feet.

And so they begin to understand each other. Not automatically the way they do with so much else, not without asking, but in a different way, just as deep, just as necessary. She tells him about growing up with a mother who insisted that everything in the house be tidied before it was possible to turn to the marketing or visiting friends, about boarding school demerits for an unmade bed or an incompletely cleared table in the refectory (Peggy was somewhat particular about how she acquired her demerits), about going into shelters during the Blitz (or sometimes _not_ going into shelters) wondering if someone was going to have to return to her bedsit and find her clothing dropped onto the floor or a crumb-covered dish on the table, remnants of a life to which she would never return.

He still doesn’t feel the need to keep things as constantly tidy as she does, but now he knows that element of her, sees her requests not as something to tolerate but to understand as a part of who she is. And she understands, too, about how comforting he finds the smell of paint, the sounds and scents of the city, how familiar they are, how sometimes for weeks throwing the windows wide and letting those things in was the only way he had been able to have a bit of the outdoors with him. She didn’t know him then, but she knows about that part of him now.

So they compromise, buying window screens and keeping the gap to only a few inches, switching places in bed so Steve sleeps closer to the window, feeling the play of air across his face as he falls asleep.

They compromise, agreeing that Peggy can polish her nails as long as she leaves a window open. Steve has always liked how they look anyway and, more importantly, how they make her feel: pretty and coordinated and in control of the way she’s perceived. With the issue of smell dealt with, he can admire each new color she chooses. They decide that Steve’s tradition of listening to baseball can continue at a lowered volume and with more limited commentary, though Peggy eventually finds herself looking over with fondness at his avid appreciation of the game (even if, when he finally takes her to one in person, she still finds it far inferior to cricket).

She becomes more judicious about buying books, finally allowing herself to leave behind her tradition of newly purchased detective stories that buoyed her during the war; they go to browse at the library together during evening hours instead. He starts running free art classes at the local community center and is allowed to have his own easel there for paintings in progress.

Peggy is permitted to take Steve’s undershirts and button-downs without asking as long as she knows they’ll return to him after laundry day. Steve can eat her marmalade, but only if he’s reasonable about his sampling and willing to buy another jar if he finishes the last of it.

“I sort of liked the part where you were all exasperated with each other,” a disgruntled Howard tells them, heaping a serving of spaghetti onto his plate the first time they host dinner at their place. “Some of us like it when you aren’t perfect all the time.”

Steve laughs. “We definitely aren't perfect, but we had something good and we knew it.”

“Well, you knew enough to be damn obvious about it,” Bucky says, helping himself to bread. “And not do anything but moon for years.”

“We were at war,” Steve scowls. “And we were taking time to build a foundation.”

“And now we know,” Peggy takes over smoothly, “that good foundation or not, relationships actually take work.” She knocks back the last of her scotch sour (she’d charmed the recipe out of the bartender at the Stork Club) and looks at Howard over the rim of the empty glass. “Perhaps one day you’ll be lucky enough to take part yourself.”

Mr. Jarvis coughs politely into his wine glass, his mouth thinned against a laugh. Ana reaches over to cuff her husband on the shoulder before patting Howard on his. “I’m sure you will one day,” she says with kind consolation.

“Not one day soon, I hope,” Howard says. “I’ll leave that kind of work to you for now.”

And they keep working at it, communicating and laughing and finding middle ground, discovering who they have each been and who they can be together. They make a life that is _theirs_ : talking in the mornings while Peggy puts on her makeup, their eyes catching in the mirror; sitting down together every month to pay bills and review their savings, their plans for them the future, treating themselves to something sweet once it’s done (berry tarts when Steve buys, brownies when Peggy does); a dance at midnight on New Year’s Eve regardless of where they are.

It’s an art, living together, being together, and they become expert at it.

And, several years down the road, when the new roommate they’ve discussed - a smaller, squirmier sort of roommate - joins the family, they plan to teach them too.

**Author's Note:**

> This is, like, the most tedious, vanilla version of fluff, but there ya go! Title, which took me a hundred years to find/select, is "an Irish proverb" according to the internet.


End file.
